Our World Ship

By: Elsie Lamarr

Not a lot of citizens know this, but today is day 1825 according to our calendar. That means it’s been roughly five years since Olivia Sun arrived from the Core. which we all consider to be the beginning of our timeline aboard the World Ship.

What many citizens might also not realize, is that we spent over 1000 of those days focusing on survival more than anything else. We made great discoveries, like the World Ship mainframe computer known as the Grid, and of course the place where many of us now live, our humble Town.

However, it was not until day 1200 of our calendar that we launched Explorer One. This event would usher in a multitude of changes for our citizens, our leaders, and the World Ship itself. It was then, during an exploratory mission near the Upper Levels, that we received a transmission from an unknown source.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Explorer group, our researchers, and engineers, we have managed to decipher over 80% of the data we received, which has been instrumental in teaching us about the World Ship computer systems.

During Olivia’s Sun time as leader of the Explorer group, the way we saw the World Ship evolved from the most basic understanding to a fully-visualized mapping of our home. Her efforts relied heavily on physical exploration and cartography, with photography, measurements, and estimated theories on the land around us. We came to have a pretty good understanding of the Town, the Frontier, and even the Grid.

Beyond our View

While it’s true that the World Ship interior is becoming better understood each and every day, we remain relatively oblivious to our own external view. According to the mainframe computers at the Grid, we have concluded that we are living aboard a true spaceship, one that is moving through the great cosmos. Despite the data, however, we do not have access to any imagery of the ship itself.

Working from our internal schematics, our engineers have made several attempts at sculpting what they believe the World Ship might look like from outside, and those efforts have led to many jokingly referring to our ship as the “Lamp Post.”

Our World Ship, lovingly named the “Lamp Post”.

The World Ship Elements

The first thing to know about the World Ship is its sheer size. Using a few colors to highlight the most important segments, we can break down the areas of the World Ship for better understanding. The schematics break the ship into four main components:

Habitat (Dark and Light Blue)

Propulsion (Yellow)

Protection (Dark Red)

Terrarium (Green)

The Four Components of the Lamp Post.

Habitat

The schematics refer to the Habitat as “living space”. We would call it… everything. Literally everything. The blue area of the World Ship houses the Core, Grid, Garage, and everything else we have explored so far. In our image, the dark blue represents the Upper Levels and the light blue represents the Lower Levels.

Propulsion

The yellow elements represent the World Ship propulsion system. We know very little about the massive systems, but we do know that the ships schematics called for absolutely zero crew interaction due to various dangers to safety of the ship and citizens. It’s unlikely we’ll be exploring that area any time soon.

Protection

The dark red elements are a type of super dense ablative material. It appears to be designed for the single purpose of keeping the habitat and propulsion systems safe from cosmic radiation, debris, and any other external forces.

Terrarium

The green elements represent the most exciting part of our World Ship. It’s labelled as a terrarium, but we’ve come to know it as the Garden. This entire area is over twice the volume of the habitat, but our engineers are still working on exploring just the first of six incredibly massive segments, each one able to contain entire cityscapes!

Next Week on Brick by Brick

I hope this introduction to our World Ship has helped every citizen take their first steps into understanding the size and scale of the place that we call home, and the scope of the work that we have ahead of us as Explorers. Each new day brings with it hundreds of opportunities to seek out and discover new information, and that is an exciting prospect!

Next week, we’re going to take a better look at the Habitat and the makeup of the main sections of the ship that we occupy and live in each day. I am confident that you will be amazed at all there is to know.